The leadership (the board on down) at Rice continues to give me and my team enormous latitude to pursue network architectures that are bold, cool, esoteric, weird, overpriced, too complex, or visionary – all depending on who you talk to. In 2005 we were the first college or university network to use carrier architecture (MPLS VPN VRF segmentation). This spring we deployed into production “the world’s largest firewalls” – a pair of Juniper SRX 5800s that can push 120 gbps. And we made them clustered across 11km of dark fiber between two data centers. We’re still working out the kinks! At the moment we’re trying to get multicast working again. The clustering still isn’t working either. Ah well, omelets, eggs…

Credit card industry security compliance continues to take up LARGE amounts of my time.

I’m overseeing the installation of the IT infrastructure (data/phone/AV) into the new physics building. Working with architects is huge fun – this firm (KTA) is also building the new US embassy in London.

It’s been three years since I hung up my engineering hat for management role. I can’t stress enough how key my Hampshire background has been to this transition. Hampshire prepares their grads for bureaucratic middle management – what!? LOL, a good topic for another post. Just trust me for now.

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January 24, 2011 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.